Having said this, she paused, and looked anxiously at the widow, who looked at her also in the windy gleams of lamplight with more and more perplexity. “Who is Miss Smith?” asked poor Mrs. Vincent. “Who are—you? Indeed, I am very sorry to seem rude; but my mind has been so much occupied. Arthur, of course, would know if he were here, but Susan’s illness has taken up all my thoughts; and—I beg your pardon—she may want me even now,” she continued, quickening her steps. Even the courtesy due to one of the flock had a limit; and the minister’s mother knew it was necessary not to yield too completely to all the demands that her son’s people might make upon her. Was this even one of her son’s people? Such persons were unusual in the connection. Mrs. Vincent, all fatigued, excited, and anxious as she was, felt at her wits’ end.
“Yes, your son would know if he were here; he has taken my parole and trusted me,” said the strange woman; “but a woman’s parole should not be taken. I try to keep it; but unless they come, or I have news—— Who am I? I am a woman that was once young and had friends. They married me to a man, who was not a man, but a fine organisation capable of pleasures and cruelties. Don’t speak. You are very good; you are a minister’s wife. You don’t know what it is, when one is young and happy, to find out all at once that life means only so much torture and misery, and so many lies, either done by you or borne by you—what does it matter which? My baby came into the world with a haze on her sweet soul because of that discovery. If it had been but her body!” said Mrs. Vincent’s strange companion, with bitterness. “A dwarfed creature, or deformed, or—— But she was beautiful—she is beautiful, as pretty as Alice; and if she lives, she will be rich. Hush, hush! you don’t know what my fears were,” continued Mrs. Hilyard, with a strange humility, once more putting her hand on the widow’s arm. “If he could have got possession of her, how could I tell what he might have done?—killed her—but that would have been dangerous; poisoned what little mind she had left—made her like her mother. I stole her away. Long ago, when I thought she might have been safe with you, I meant to have told you. I stole her out of his power. For a little while she was with me, and he traced us—then I sent the child away. I have not seen her but in glimpses, lest he should find her. It has cost me all I had, and I have lived and worked with my hands,” said the needlewoman of Back Grove Street, lifting her thin fingers to the light and looking at them, pathetic vouchers to the truth of her story. “When he drove me desperate,” she went on, labouring in vain to conceal the panting, long-drawn breath which impeded her utterance, “you know? I don’t talk of that. The child put her arms round that old woman after her mother had saved her. She had not a word, not a word for me, who had done—— But it was all for her sake. This is what I have had to suffer. She looked in my face and waved me away from her and said, ‘Susan, Susan!’ Susan meant your daughter—a new friend, a creature whom she had not seen a week before—and no word, no look, no recognition for me!”
“Oh, I am very sorry, very sorry!” said Mrs. Vincent, in her turn taking the poor thin hand with an instinct of consolation. Susan’s name, thus introduced, went to the mother’s heart. She could have wept over the other mother thus complaining, moaning out her troubles in her compassionate ear.
“I left them in a safe place. I came home to fall into your son’s hands. He might have been sure, had it come to that, that no one should have suffered for me” said Mrs. Hilyard, with again a tone of bitterness. “What was my life worth, could any man suppose? And since then I have not heard a word—not a word—whether the child is still where I left her, or whether some of his people have found her—or whether she is ill—or whether— I know nothing, nothing! Have a little pity upon me, you innocent woman! I never asked pity, never sought sympathy before; but a woman can never tell what she may be brought to. I am brought down to the lowest depths. I cannot stand upright any longer,” she cried, with a wailing sigh. “I want somebody—somebody at least to give me a little comfort. Comfort! I remember,” she said, with one of those sudden changes of tone which bewildered Mrs. Vincent, “your son once spoke to me of getting comfort from those innocent young sermons of his. He knows a little better now; he does not sail over the surface now as he used to do in triumph. Life has gone hard with him, as with me and all of us. Tell him, if I get no news I will break my parole. I cannot help myself—a woman’s honour is not her word. I told him so. Say to your son——”
“My son? what have you to do with my son?” said Mrs. Vincent, with a sudden pang. The poor mother was but a woman too. She did not understand what this connection was. A worn creature, not much younger than herself, what possible tie could bind her to Arthur? The widow, like other women, could believe in any “infatuation” of men; but could not understand any other bond subsisting between these two. The thought went to her heart. Young men had been known before now to be mysteriously attracted by women old, unbeautiful, unlike themselves. Could this be Arthur’s fate? Perhaps it was a danger more dismal than that which he had just escaped in Salem. Mrs. Vincent grew sick at heart. She repeated, with an asperity of which her soft voice might have been thought incapable, “What have you to do with my son?”
Mrs. Hilyard made no answer—perhaps she did not hear the question. Her eyes, always restlessly turning from one object to another, had found out, in the lighted street to which they had now come, a belated postman delivering his last letters. She followed him with devouring looks; he went to Vincent’s door as they approached, delivered something, and passed on into the darkness with a careless whistle. While Mrs. Vincent watched her companion with doubtful and suspicious looks through the veil which, once more among the lights of Grange Street, the minister’s mother had drawn over her face, the unconscious object of her suspicion grasped her arm, and turned to her with beseeching eyes. “It may be news of my child?” she said, with a supplication beyond words. She drew the widow on with the desperation of her anxiety. The little maid had still the letter in her hand when she opened the door. It was not even for Mr. Vincent. It was for the mistress of the house, who had not yet returned from the meeting at Salem. Mrs. Vincent paused upon the threshold, compassionate but determined. She looked at the unhappy woman who stood upon the steps in the light of the lamp, gazing eagerly in at the door, and resolved that she should penetrate no farther; but even in the height of her determination the widow’s heart smote her when she looked at that face, so haggard and worn with passion and anxiety, with its furtive gleaming eyes, and all the dark lines of endurance which were so apparent now, when the tide of emotion had grown too strong to be concealed. “Have you—no—friends in Carlingford?” said the widow, with hesitation and involuntary pity. She could not ask her to enter where, perhaps, her presence might be baleful to Arthur; but the little woman’s tender heart ached, even in the midst of her severity, for the suffering in that face.
“Nowhere!” said Mrs. Hilyard; then, with a gleam out of her eyes which took the place of a smile, “Do not be sorry for me; I want no friends—nobody could share my burden with me. I am going back—home—to Alice. Tell Mr. Vincent; I think something must happen to-night,” she added, with a slight shiver; “it grows intolerable, beyond bearing. Perhaps by the telegraph—or perhaps—— And Miss Smith has this address. I told you my story,” she went on, drawing closer, and taking the widow’s hand, “that you might have pity on me, and understand—no, not understand; how could she?—but if you were like me, do you think you could sit still in one place, with so much upon your heart? You never could be like me—but if you had lost your child——”
“I did,” said Mrs. Vincent, drawing a painful breath at the recollection, and drawn unwittingly by the sight of the terrible anxiety before her into a reciprocation of confidence—“my child who had been in my arms all her life— God gave her back again; and now, while I am speaking, He may be taking her away,” said the mother, with a sudden return of all her anxiety. “I cannot do you any good, and Susan may want me: good-night—good-night.”
“It was not God who gave her back to you,” said Mrs. Hilyard, grasping the widow’s hand closer—“it was I—remember it was I. When you think hardly of me, recollect—I did it. She might have been—but I freed her—remember; and if you hear anything, if it were but a whisper, of my child, think of it, and have pity on me. You will?—you understand what I say?”
The widow drew away her hand with a pang of fear. She retreated hurriedly, yet with what dignity she could, calling the little maid to shut the door.